


Her Links, His Chains

by rahelawriter



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Bitterness, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Childhood Sweethearts, Clones, Crying, F/M, False Identity, False Memories, First Love, Game: Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Hugging, Lies, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Mid-Canon, Nobodies (Kingdom Hearts) - Freeform, Not Beta Read, One-Sided Relationship, Past Brainwashing, Promises, Reunions, except not really, good luck charms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 02:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17397959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rahelawriter/pseuds/rahelawriter
Summary: "Of all people, you’re the first person I find after losing everything else. This whole time I’ve been fighting to protect the one who mattered most to me, but I had forgotten that it was you all along."





	Her Links, His Chains

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the rewriting of the Riku Replica's heart and memories.

_ “Take care of her.” _

_ He was resigned to the knowledge that he would never see his friends again. For all he knew, he would be trapped in this dark, miserable afterworld for all eternity. But he supposed after all that he’s done, all the people he’s hurt, he deserved this. All he could hope was that closing this door and saying his goodbyes would be enough of an apology. Sora’s face disappeared, and so did the door.  _

_ The last thing that he remembered was a small glimmer of hope that he would be forgiven… _

 

… And then he opened his eyes.

 

Riku was hovering in a small, grey space, groaning and disoriented. After mere seconds, the space opened up in front of him, as if he were watching a flower bloom from the inside. As if gravity suddenly turned itself back on, Riku stumbled forward and fell. His whole body hurt and his vision was foggy; but he was aware enough that he was on the floor, with his throbbing head being raised and pulled onto someone’s lap. He felt so heavy, but with some effort his eyelids parted just enough to see…

 

A girl?

 

He still couldn’t see well, but he could make out some features. Blonde girl in white. Delicate fingers brushing his bangs out of his face. Soon enough his sight cleared and he was stricken by the sight of her.

Soft, gentle features, eyes blue as the sea, kind yet sad… Like a doll, but she was very much alive and very real. But Riku squinted, and felt a sense of recollection somewhere deep; as though he knew her… And then it hit him. 

 

_ He, Sora, and Kairi weren’t always a trio; once upon a time, they were a quartet. There was another girl who was always with them, but she was so quiet that some might not even notice her. Shy and introverted, a sharp contrast to the two outgoing ones. She was more than content to spend a long, sunny day on the beach just sitting back and drawing pictures. Always taking care of her sketchbooks and crayons. She would draw anything and anyone, and Riku remembered her being really good at it, to the point where he and Sora would fight over who she would draw next. Sora would rarely win. And something in Riku's heart always felt warm and fuzzy whenever he sat still and just watched as she drew him. And every crayon drawing of himself that she made of and gave to him, he cherished by hanging them up on his walls.  _

_ Riku also remembered that he was closer to her than Sora and Kairi were. She was nervous a lot of the time, and easily frightened. One night, during a meteor shower, they sat together on the beach to watch as the celestial show passed overhead; but Riku noticed her scooting away, running into the shed, and beginning to cry. _

_ Riku went in after her, voice full of worry. “Hey, what’s wrong?” _

_ “I’m scared,” she sniffled. “What if a shooting star hits the island?” _

_ “You don’t need to worry,” He declared, holding a wooden toy sword flat against his chest as if to swear a knightly oath. “If a shooting star comes this way, then I’ll protect you! I won’t let ‘em get anywhere near you, Naminé.” _

_ Naminé blinked in surprise, before she smiled, wiping away her tears. “Thank you, Riku,” she giggled. He noticed that she was getting something out of her dress pocket that she then put into his hand. “Here.” _

_ “What’s this?” Stepping outside to see it better in the meteor-lit night, the object Naminé had given him was a tiny ceramic trinket in the shape of a golden star, with a green and thickly-braided string attached to the uppermost point. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Riku commented, “It looks like a Paopu fruit…” _

_ “Uh-huh,” Naminé confirmed. “It’s my lucky charm that I’ve had my whole life, ever since I was a baby.” _

_ “And you’re giving it to me…?” _

_ “Yes. I want you to have it.” _

_ “Naminé…” Young mind struggling with the enormity of this gift, Riku squeezed Naminé’s hand, insistent on conveying some unknown emotion bigger than his entire body. There they stood, under the light of shining, falling stars. “From now on,  _ **_I'll_ ** _ be the one to bring you good luck. I'll protect you forever and ever.” _

 

_ From then on, Riku had all but declared himself to be Naminé's bodyguard. Every morning he would walk her to school, and every afternoon he would walk her home. Any time someone at school tried to pick on her, or take her sketchbook, he would be on them in a second. He would scour the playground island whenever they visited and search for anything she might like to draw, be it a seashell, a particularly nice-looking leaf, or an amazing view of the ocean. During thunderstorms he would hurry himself next door to make sure she wasn’t crying under her covers. Not wanting to waste time by knocking on the door and explaining to her parents why he was here, he would always get in through her bedroom window. Impromptu sleepovers would become so normal that he would pack up a backpack with a change of clothes any time the sky was dark and overcast. They spent that time playing together to make her forget her fears; reading, drawing, making shadow puppets, building forts out of blankets and pillows… And to the point where his parents would joke about it by calling her his ‘childhood sweetheart,’ Riku was true to his word, staying by Naminé’s side whenever he could. _

_ Until one day, it all came to an abrupt end. It was all because Sora had been showing off his new bike. He was determined to drive his friends around anywhere and everywhere they wanted to go. He offered Naminé a ride home from school, and Riku didn’t mind. But then… They crashed. Hard. Naminé was hurt really badly. And from there it was all a blur. Riku remembered the hospital. The muffled shouting of all of their parents’ arguing in another room. Not being allowed to see his friend before getting dragged away, or any time after that. Not getting to say goodbye before her family packed up and moved away.  _

_ He remembered crying. Crying and yelling in his room, about how unfair it all was. Perhaps that was the first time Riku felt dark emotions sinking their claws into his heart. Sorrow. Anger. Bitterness. Naminé was gone, taken away, all because Sora was a clueless goofball who let their friend get hurt. And Riku knew that, but still let Sora take her for a ride on a bike he could barely even drive himself.  _

_ … He didn’t protect her well enough. And now he’d never see her again. He hid the Paopu Charm, and all the drawings of hers that he had kept, deep in a drawer he never opened again; he wasn’t worthy of it. And in just the same way, he refused to talk about her. Refused to listen to conversations where her name was brought up. So it went for days and months, until slowly but surely things were going back to normal. And eventually, a day came where Riku didn’t think about Naminé at all.  _

_ He had forgotten.  _

 

But he was looking at her right now.

Riku stared at her, eyes wide as he righted himself. Reaching a trembling hand towards her, he hovered, as if he feared that actually touching her cheek might cause her to dissipate into wisps of smoke. “N-Naminé…?”

Her smile tinged with sadness, Naminé nodded.

“Naminé, I… I can’t believe it, you’re here…” Feeling a lump forming in his throat, he bowed his head, unable to look her in the eye. “You left. You left and I completely forgot about you… I promised I’d keep you safe and I couldn’t, and then I  _ forgot you… _ ” 

Riku thought back to everything he’d done ever since that fateful night, when he left the Islands. He’d been willing to hurt and kidnap complete strangers and innocent bystanders. He was fully willing to tear himself, tear Sora, tear the entire universe to shreds to save Kairi. All because he was convinced that he loved her. But after all that had happened, he wasn’t so sure. And now… After he finally remembered Naminé, all the feelings that he’d had for Kairi seemed so insignificant now, paling in comparison to…  

…  _ Be honest with yourself, Riku, Naminé was your first love. And she still is. _

Shaking his head with a soft breath of a chuckle, Riku said as he scooted closer to her. “I’m sorry, Naminé, I just… Of all people, you’re the first person I find after losing everything else. This whole time I’ve been fighting to protect the one who mattered most to me, but I had forgotten that it was you all along. I can’t believe this is real…” And then with that statement came a sudden sense of uncertainty. “ _ Is _ this real? I’m not dreaming, right? Or am I--? Are we--?”

Ever since Ansem took his body and cast him into the darkness, Riku had been operating under the assumption that he was as good as dead. And he wasn’t quite sure if his fears had ever been disproven or not. For all he knew, the two were both dead and he was finally reuniting with Naminé in the afterworld.

Reaching up to hold his hand, she spoke for the first time, her voice just as sweet and soft as he’d always remembered. “Don’t worry, Riku. You’re alright now. I… That is, my caretakers and I, we… We found you adrift, and brought you here.”

“Your caretakers…?” At that, Riku furrowed his brow in concern. “Naminé, where are we? What happened after you moved away?”

Naminé tensed, pursing her lips and looking down. “I-I…”

“O-ho! You’re finally awake, Riku! What a relief!”

A shrill, mocking voice came from the other end of the room, making both Riku and Naminé jump. Looking towards the doorway, there stood a tall young woman with yellow hair slicked back, save for two insect-like antennas sticking up, wearing a black leather coat and an ear-to-ear grin that sent a chill through Riku’s body.

“… Naminé?” Riku whispered, “Who’s that?”

“Larxene,” she murmured back, her voice tremulous. “One of my, my ‘caretakers…’”

“Aww,  _ wook _ at you two,” Larxene cooed in a faux baby-talk manner, clasping her hands against her cheek. “Don’t wet me intewwupt the wittle wovebiwd’s weunion!”

“Okay, first of all,” Riku cut her off, cringing,  _ “Stop _ talking like that.”

“Ugh, fine, if you don’t want me to be  _ happy _ for you,” the woman scoffed, her thin veneer of sweetness instantly vanishing. “But what was it you were saying before, Naminé? You were about to explain what happened after you moved away and broke your dear Riku’s heart? I don’t think I’ve heard this story either!”

With every word Larxene said, Naminé grew more and more visibly uncomfortable, and Riku wouldn’t stand for it. He still felt heavy, but he slowly got up to his feet and puffed out his chest. “Hey. Stop that. If Naminé doesn’t wanna talk about it, then I won’t force her, and you shouldn’t either.”

Larxene shot him a scowl and clenched her fists. Riku could have sworn he saw tiny crackles of electricity before Naminé stood up. “No, it’s fine, please don’t fight!”

“Then get on with it and tell him already.” Shifting her weight onto one leg and crossing her arms, Larxene already looked bored. 

“O-okay! But, there’s not really much to tell. It’s just like you remember, Riku. After the biking accident, my parents were really upset. They already thought I wasn’t safe in that neighborhood, and that was just the last straw. So we moved to another island altogether. From then on, I was all alone. I didn’t have any friends at my new school, and I couldn’t trust my parents after what they did…”

“Naminé…”

“So it went on like that for years, until the night of that terrible storm. Everything went dark, and then I woke up here, in Castle Oblivion. That’s when…” She paused to take a deep breath. “That’s when the Organization found me.”

“And what is the Organization, you might be wondering?” Larxene spoke up again. “We’re just a little collective of nerds who dedicated to… How did Axel put it? ‘To unlock the mysteries of the heart.’”

“That’s cryptic,” Riku commented. The use of the phrase ‘unlock’ was not lost on him.

“There’s more of us outside this room and we’re just dying to meet you.”

Riku’s mind was swimming with everything Naminé had told him. So while he eventually forgot about her and moved on with his life, she was lonely and miserable for years. And it took him opening the Keyhole and casting their home into the darkness to get her away from that life. Was that supposed to make him feel better about his actions…?

Because it did.

Not that it made Riku’s understanding of his current situation any better. But he wanted to know more; addressing Larxene with a frown, he asked, “Is Naminé helping you and the rest of this ‘Organization’ with whatever it is you’re doing?”

“Oh, she’s a  _ huge _ help! Naminé is absolutely vital to our plans here!”

With a deeper frown, Riku presented another question: “Is that why she’s still here now, even after our world was restored? Is she really here because she wants to be?” 

Larxene didn’t seem to appreciate his increasingly hostile tone, and was about to take a step forward when Naminé stepped between the two. “R-Riku, it’s fine, they’re not, they’re not trapping me…” She insisted, “I, I didn’t go back to the Islands because…”

Naminé trailed off, drawing her lips into a tight line, as if the thought was too painful to finish. So Riku finished it for her. “You don’t want to go back.”

She sagged her shoulders and hung her head, confirming his suspicions. He expected as much, with her solitary existence there not seeming much of a life to go back to. After a heavy pause, he took her hand.

“… Then I’ll stay here too. There’s nothing for me back home. And besides…” Going back to the Destiny Islands now would mean going back to the exact same boring stagnation he wanted to get away from. But more important to him than any urge to see the outside world, was to protect what mattered most to him. Riku had already decided that he would keep his promise this time and stand by Naminé’s side forever. With a soft smile, he laid a hand on her shoulder. “My whole world is right here.”

Naminé seemed shocked to hear this. “Riku--”

Larxene cut in once again, slapping him on the back just a little too hard for it to be a friendly gesture. “Glad to hear it, Riku! Looking forward to working with you!”

Riku returned with an unfriendly face, scrunching up his nose. “I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it for  _ her.” _

“Yeah, yeah, I got that the first twenty times,” Larxene turned her back to him and walked away, seemingly to dismiss him, but then she began waving for them to follow her. “But come on, we gotta let Vexen know you’re awake.”

Riku and Naminé followed her out of the blank white room and into a blank white hallway. “Who’s Vexen?”

“Your doctor, more or less. You were pretty banged up when we found you floating out in the nothingness. Musta been a bunch of Shadows in the Realm of Darkness getting together to beat you up or something.”

Naminé seemed to cringe at that. It must have been true, then. At once he wanted to reassure her. “Well, whatever happened, I’m alright now. Never better, in fact.”

“That’s good, if you’re so dead set on protecting Naminé. Because there’s one person in particular that she needs protection from…”

“And who’s that?” Riku asked with a smirk,  _ “You?” _

“Oh,  _ ha-ha-ha,” _ Larxene’s fake laugh dripping with sarcasm, she put her hands on her hips. “Naminé and I are like sisters. Aren’t we, Naminé?”

Naminé quietly nodded as if she were being held at knifepoint to do so. Instinctively Riku stood in front of her, not falling for it. He knew a bully when he saw one. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’d better plan on showing that kind of hostility to people who are going to actually hurt her,” Larxene sneered. But this time, she actually elaborated on what dangers were being posed. But it was the last name that Riku expected. “... Like Sora.”

It was as though she’d hit him in the chest with a bag of bricks. “—Wait, Sora? He’s here?” 

“Both him and the King’s little goonies. They came looking for you, but then Sora started to remember Naminé and at once he forgot  _ allll _ about you.”

Oh, that definitely sounded like Sora. 

“Hmph. Wouldn’t be the first time. He really is an idiot, isn’t he?” He clenched his fists, and gnashed his teeth, remembering all the anger that had welled up in his heart over the course of recent events. All the images of Sora flaunting his new weapon and new friends flashing through his mind, Riku muttered, “Ugh, lousy scatterbrained show-off helping every random passerby with a sob story while he forgets about his  _ real friends… _ ”

Larxene raised her eyebrows and raised a hand to her chin in contemplation. “I mean, he  _ is _ pretty bent out of shape over her. He seems convinced that he’s the hero in a fairy tale, coming to save the princess from the bad guys. Not so different from you. Maybe you two could help each other?”

Furiously shaking his head, Riku rejected the idea. “I don’t need any help protecting Naminé. And I definitely don’t need  _ Sora _ butting in. Naminé being forced to leave was all his fault!”

“Please, wait, Riku--!” Naminé fretted, grasping at Riku’s arm. “Please don’t blame Sora for what happened, it was an accident…”

He looked back to her in disbelief. “What, you don’t actually  _ want _ to see him, do you? Everything you went through on the islands, it all started with Sora being a thoughtless little—!” He cut himself off there, not wanting to swear in front of her. Shaking his head to get his train of thought back on track, Riku went on. “Who cares what Sora wants. We don’t need him. And if he doesn’t get that, then I’ll  _ make  _ him leave.”

Larxene was plainly impressed by Riku's disgust towards Sora. “Ooh, you’ve got a  _ grudge  _ there, buddy. I like it! Still, we’ve gotta make get the okay from Doctor Vexen before you can go kick him out.”

The black-coated woman moved forward, with Naminé closely following. But as Riku was about to follow along, he felt something in his pocket that he somehow failed to notice before now. Fishing out the mystery object, he gasped, unable to believe his eyes. In his hand he held the very same paopu charm that Naminé had given him all those years ago. But, how? He locked it away in the back of a drawer until he himself forgot it was there, and he certainly didn’t have it with him when the Islands were destroyed, or any time after that…

At that moment he heard light footsteps approaching from the front. Naminé was walking to him slowly, hands clasped together. “Riku, I…” 

“Naminé, look!” He opened his hand and dangled the paopu charm from its string, smiling warmly at the memory of receiving it.

Her eyes widening in recognition as well, Naminé smiled. “My good luck charm…”

“You see? It’s okay now, Naminé,” Riku said as he closed the distance between them until he was close enough to pull her into a hug. His arms around Naminé’s shoulders, Riku pet the back of her head, and soothed, “I finally remembered our promise. During the meteor shower, when you gave me your lucky charm, I promised that I would protect you. And I will, from anything, whether it’s your loneliness, your so-called caretakers, or even someone who we thought was our friend.”

“Riku…”

He held her close, and felt her arms hugging him back… And feeling bold, laid a single soft kiss atop the crown of her head. “Don’t worry. I’ll never let Sora hurt you again. And I’ll be with you forever.”

Holding her as close as he did, he couldn’t see the tears she was crying. 


End file.
